New York Gun Manufacturer Moves to Pennsylvania. “Catch Us if You Can.”

New York passed the SAFE law on gun manufacturers in January, after debating for one day. That sent a message to one gun manufacturer. It bought 600 acres — almost a square mile — of land in Pennsylvania. It’s moving out.

The Kahr company’s vice president of sales explained: “One of our big concerns was, OK, the SAFE Act was passed in the middle of the night. You wake up the next morning and boom, that was it. “We just felt like, gee, if they can do this, what can they do next?

It will not matter to Kahr what they do next. The company will be gone. It will simply remove itself from the jurisdiction of the government of New York.

This used to be called “voting with your feet.” If you get tired of living under a government’s taxes and regulations, you move.

State lawmakers think they can trap businesses. They are wrong. Business owners and voters can move. Most choose not to, but over time attrition takes over.

The Northeastern states, except for New Hampshire, are noted for their high-tax, high-regulation policies. New York and Massachusetts compete with each other in the race to pass more laws. So, New Hampshire keeps getting “refugees” from Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania gets them from New York.

For half a century, the Southeast and Texas have benefited. Business has steadily moved south. The labor unions of the Northeast have seen their employers board up the factories and leave. This is not going to change until the regulatory mania of northeastern voters finally subsides. It hasn’t so far. Neither has the exodus.

People can still vote with their feet. They can take their money and their guns, and move to greener pastures.

Posting Policy:We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse. Read more.

85 thoughts on “New York Gun Manufacturer Moves to Pennsylvania. “Catch Us if You Can.””

Will the last person to leave New York / Illinois / California / Maryland / Connecticut / Massachusetts please remember to turn out the lights. Will the politicians please remember to flush the toilet.

Please restate your comment to exclude Illinois in favor of Chicago metro area. The rest of us downstate are sane. Illinois has 102 counties of which in the last election only 26 voted Democrat. The other 76 counties, sanity prevailed. We just simply do not have enough graveyards downstate to swing the welfare vote,

Don't forget the 1.2 Million gun owners that vote in NJ. New Jersey is in a race with California and New York to see who gets the tougher gun laws–all in violation of the SECOND AMENDMENT, which has now been incorporated into the States via the US Supreme Court McDonald v. Chicago ruling.

It's time for NJ gun owners to take a stand since we have a powerful voting block that can change the course of any election at any given time.

Good for Kahr. I wish Remington would follow suit. I am pretty sure that they decided to stay because they don't want to leave their 1000+ employees in the lurch, and I can respect that. But for what they would save by moving to Texas or Arizona, they could probably help all of their employees move as well and still come out way ahead of the game. And they won't have to worry as much about some criminal-minded fascists cooking up a law overnight that actually will be detrimental to the company's health. New York is a lost cause.

God bless Illinois outside of northeast Ehhllenoise, but you people better fight like junk yard dogs with that bunch if zombies or you will be joining us outside if Illinois in places like Indiana and Texas. Good luck!

The Unions will become a problem if Kahr isn't paying attention to employee morale and keeping the Staff reasonably happy. I suspect that the kind of Liberal "activist" person who might want a Union probably wouldn't work for a "gun maker".

Odds are that Kahr, who set up shop in a reasonably rural area, will keep a nice union free shop full of happy employees.

What makes you think that people from New York will vote differently if they move to another state? By moving and helping all employes to move Remington could end up recreating the problem in a new location. That someone work for Remington is no guarantee that their views on issues that don’t involve gun rights aren’t the same as the the rest of the New York voters.

What still floors me about the SAFE Act is how Cuomo got away with the "necessity" sham. I wish that someone would fight the law on this basis.

He admitted that "if the Legislature had had enough time to debate the SAFE act that the gun lobby might have halted passage". Where I come from this sort of "obstruction" is known as the "legislative process", which itself is a derivative of the democratic process.

I'm surprised that Mr. Cuomo did not regret that he couldn't pass the SAFE Act by Ukase from his Governor's chair. "Stroke of the pen, law of the land", as Sid Blumenthal used to say.

There is a movement afoot in upstate New York to relieve the businesses there from the burdensome tax base imposed by the City. The problem in New York is that 2/3 of the state population lives within 50 miles of Times Square, and the rest of the state (95% of the land area) is a normal place and has to compete with lower tax jurisdictions. But this won't help with laws like SAFE, unfortunately. There has been some talk about upstate seceding from downstate, but this has been pretty much discounted. Maybe it will be taken more seriously now, I don't know. But the gun manufacturing is all upstate, in places like Ithaca and Illion. Little conservative towns dominated by the liberal City.

When will the people in this country realize that the federal government and many of the state governments, especially those that have been Democrat for decades are not really friends of the citizens! They are oppressive and are becoming more so. There is an ulterior motive but no one wants to listen. If you read history, it becomes clear that this nation has been under attack for many decades. Unless the people wake up, stand up, speak up and take their nation back, it is lost! But the enemy has done its job well. Many of the "useful idiots" as some call them, who make up this nation don't even realize what is happening! They get things for free, so they think it will always be so and they can "depend" on their government to take care of them! They will always come down on the side of the government! One of the things the government must do is confiscate weapons so the other people, the patriots, cannot fight back when the time comes! At least Kahr is attempting to fight back! ,

Never happen Marxist, Liberal loons, NYC folks, all the same breed must be the height of the buildings, drives them loony and they all cry for the warmth of the mothers womb. Seems the same in most of the eastern cities. Left wing loons rule the roost.

It must have to do with some kind of Corporate Well Fare! Like the company pays $10 an hour and through the local and state taxes the company gets another $10 an hour to pay the employee and then through Federal Withholding taxes these company's get another $10 an hour for these company's employee's! Now I'm talking Mega Company's not Hot dog cart's and such! Other than that I have no clue!

No, gun and ammo manufacturers, as well as many other manufacturers will move to the southern (RED) states where there a few or no unions (right to work), lower taxes, and conservatives are running the government dependent libturds back to the blue states. Eventually the line will be drawn (remember the Mason-Dixon line) and there will either be succession or a war.

If more Americans from out of New Yawk voted with their wallets and their feet and boycotted all things connected to New Yawk in any way; maybe Bloomberg and Cuomo would get the message "Tyrants and Tyranny will not be suffered". The citizens of New Yawk seem to be politically brain dead.

Many years ago I worked with a developer whose service was to assist companies expand or relocate their businesses to the Southeast USA. He had lots of stories about businesses relocating from the Northeast to the Southeast. He had a client who called him one day requesting he find a suitable facility for his business as the business had all its equipment on a train headed to the southeast. The business had moved in the middle of night to avoid the union blocking the relocation and the northeastern state upholding the union action.

The uberlib control freaks will keep pushing until all productive people have abandoned N.Y. for control and extortion are the only course sicko's like Bloombum and Dumbo can comprehend. The big apple has been on the brink and rotting for years under the grasping, gasping libernuts. N.Y. being closest to the brink thanks to its misleaders, will be the first to topple. Ayn Rand's Atlas will shrug and it will be so severe even the homeless will flee while the frantic liberals resort to cannibalizing each other.
Sad but when every snout is at the trough and no one is producing fodder, famine ensues. Welcome to Obummer land.

Democrats prey on the unsuspecting. They kill their own children, embrace same-sex unions which cannot produce children, steal from producers and law-abiding citizens in order to coddle slackers, and regulate behavior according to their own narrow interests. They have used Blacks since the 1960s, and now — confident of their 95% loyalty — are turning to giving away America to illegal immigrants.

So long as there are states to run to (so long as libs leave their destructive policies behind), tyrannies will lose middle class Americans, who are not racist, but law-abiding. Obey the laws, government leaders!

The bigger problem of people voting with their feet is that many of those who are moving from one oppressive jurisdiction to a less oppressive jurisdiction aren't must moving to another U.S. state. They're moving offshore, so the whole USA loses.

According to seven Zogby studies announced in 2008, "by a modest estimate" more than 3,000,000 Americans relocate offshore every year. So how many of the 3,000,000 who left last year do you think were poor? Think about it… Think of names like Eduardo Saverin (Facebook) and Denise Rich (ex-wife of billionaire Marc Rich). Their money now funds jobs overseas.

Wealthy people voting with their feet isn't confined to just those moving within the USA and it's the policies that are forcing some to move offshore that is the real problem.

Soon after the unSAFE law was enacted, Remingron got a multi-million dollar contract for sniper rifles for our military. Didn't keep the article, but the total contract and the number of rifles left taxpayers paying over $20,000.00 for EACH RIFLE! What can you buy from America's best custom gun-shop for $20,000.00?

I was just going to interject the fact that Pennsylvania would be a VERY CONSERVATIVE STATE if not for Philawelfarephia and since the steel mills shut down Pittsburgh has been losing it's conservative base.

The problem with living in New Hampshire, as I do, is that when the folks from Mass move north one state to escape the financial and political insanity which their state is soaked in…they continue to vote Democrat!

PLEASE COME TO SUNBURY PA. WE NEED THE WORK AND WE SURE ARE A HUNTING AREA AS WELL AS STRONG 2ND AMMENDMENT RIGHTS BELIVERS. WE HAVE A GREAT BUILDING THAT WAS A FACTORY AND IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE RAIL ROAD TRACKS!!!!
I AM MORE THAN WILLING TO BE YOUR IN HOUSE OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH NURSE;-)

We have the same exit of companies moving out of California to Texas because of the over regulation and taxation. On top of that, the liberal legislature is trying to do their best to see that gun owners are taxed and regulated our of existance. With a very liberal attorney general, Karmala Harris who Obama declared the best looking AG in the country, and Governor Brown who looks to find new ways to tax, it is hopeless that things will get any better in the near future.

It's appalling that people living under the constitution of United States of America should not have to move anywhere, for any reason, other than the fact they want to be there and they want to work there and they want to live there.

So what happens to gun manufacturers should there be a federal law passed in the middle of the night, like NDAA, qnd the Patriot Act, I guess they can make like Chevrolet and move to Mexico. Oh that's right, Mexicans and foreign citizens aren't allowed to own guns. Bummer. Sooner or later people will really understand that there is no place to move, And what was once the greatest country on the face of the earth, once governed by those who cherished personal freedom and liberty and justice for all.

One day the American population will wake up and move their government to trials for treason, theft, fraud and tyranny.

Ps. Ever wondered why there's six jurors on the Zimmerman case and not 12? In a jurisprudence court case it requires 12 unanimous decisions to find guilt. Now it appears that 12 from six doubling the chance of a conviction merely by removing half the jury? Next it'll be a panel of three, Followed by one judge, jury, and executioner.

You silly old Dad. Texas is going to cave like a drunk girl on prom night…
When Mexicans come back to take Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and portions of California, You would be required to turn over all your firearms to the Mexican government who will be working in tandem with United States government, You will be deemed a racist and a traitor if you don't comply.

Then where you going to go pa? Scurry to another gun loving state because you didn't have the balls to defend your own?
How about Colorado Gramps? Catch my drift Sen'ior?

Watch the series on American Revolution parts 1 through 6 – you can listen while you surf or read. It will show things that most Americans were never taught about the how, why, what and when Americans took actions . .http://pinterest.com/manguscolorado/constitution-…

Now if the gun makers, etc. in Conneticutt would wake up and see the writing on the wall…Like Colt, Ruger, Winchester, and there a a dozen more firearms manufactue's that do business in that state…If they were smart they would move out lock, stock and barrel…By not doing so makes them look like a bunch of non patriots just waiting for the state to ram more restrictive gun laws down their throats forcing them to close their facilities…These gun manufactures are stupid for staying in Conneticutt!

This article mentions that people from Massachusetts and other states in the region often move to VTNH to escape the effects of ridiculous laws. What it DOESN’T mention is that, having moved here, they go on to vote exactly the same types of laws into place here! Maddening! There’s some kind of mental disconnect: they see the effects of not having draconian laws, but fail to understand the cause.

(…Did you know that you don’t even need a CCL to carry concealed in VT? Shame it’s so freakin’ cold up here; I, too, am moving south–to Texas, where the gun laws are actually worse.)

So eloquent. Such prose. Your words fall to the ground like a work of New Age art. Gee, I wish I could write like that. Music to my ears. Doesn't change the fact that you haven't a clue about what you are supposedly defending. Laugh at us old coots all you want, but we'll have the last laugh when your "dreams" become "reality" and you have to live in the hell that Obama is creating day by day, edict by edict. Did you hear the one about his recently spending $53 million on a voter ID program in Kenya when he calls it "unconstitutional" for Americans? Yeah, with government leaders like that, you have a bright future indeed. The only problem is that my grandkids are going to have to live under the tyranny you're cheering for.
Stalin called starry-eyed idealistic revolutionaries "useful idiots" — re-reading your post, I see that you fit his profile.

THE TIME WILL COME AND SOON WHEN IT WILL BE NECESSARY TO TAKE TO THE GUN TO SAVE WHATS LEFT OF OUR FREEDOM. THAT IS WHY THE COMMIE IN THE WHITE HOUSE IS HOT AFTER OUR GUNS. ONCE THEY HAVE US DISARMED, THAT WILL BE THE BALLGAME AND WE LOOSE….

Every country Obama has visited has our jobs! Wonder how many jobs went to Africa with Obama's 100,000 vacation? He is the worse president we have ever had in office and I still think he is supported by the Muslims and Saudi Arabia.